While liberal columnists and commentators were busily reciting the death rites for the GOP and lamenting the possible end of a two-party system in the United States, interested political investigators began to notice that historic and significant changes had been wrought in the Republican Party as a result of my candidacy.

These observers took a hard look at the GOP, past and present. They saw that after decades of winning prior to 1930, and years of losing after 1930, the Republican Party had simply dried up at the roots. They found that the foundation of the party in the Eastern, Midwestern and Plains states had disappeared entirely in some areas and had eroded badly in many others.

But they also discovered that the Goldwater cause had brought tens of thousands of new people into our party throughout the nation and provided the GOP with a badly needed transfusion of new blood at the grass roots.

Perhaps the most important thing about this transfusion was that it came from young and energetic people and from segments of the population which, heretofore, had not been noted for their contribution to the nation's political organization. Although these new troops were not at first successful, their vigor and enthusiasm strengthened the sinews of the Republican Party and completely revitalized the party's structure throughout the country. These new recruits stuck with it because they were motivated by ideas as well as ideals. They worked their way up in the party organizations; they became Republican leaders and candidates; they became precinct leaders, county chairmen and state officers. And by 1966, they were giving our party great national victories that had a vital bearing on our ability to win the White House in 1968.

Those who bemoaned the so-called 'Goldwater disaster' in 1964 overlooked the fact that my defeat had another side to it. To be specific, my campaign broadened the base of the Republican Party nationally in a way that had never happened before. Where Republican presidential candidates before me had numbered their financial campaign contributors in the tens of thousands, my campaign counted them in hundreds of thousands. When Richard Nixon ran for reelection in 1960, financial contributions to his campaign ran between 40,000 and 50,000. The best count ever made of the individual contributions to my campaign four years later put the total at around 661,500.

In addition, our party had organizations and the nuclei of organizations in hundreds of areas where they had never existed before. This was not only true in the South, where the phenomenon was spectacular, but also proved to be the case in many large metropolitan areas which had long been almost the sole preserve of the political liberals.

When Congress convened in 1964, President Johnson obliged the Left-wing elements of his party by exploiting the emotional climate resulting from the Presidents death and demanded that the Congress pass the Kennedy bills which they had rejected the previous spring. Almost blindly the Congress went to work and frequently, without any serious attempt to debate many important aspects of these bills, they began to be passed.

At the grassroots, observing citizens of both political parties became increasingly alarmed with what they could see happening. They began scouring the political field for a candidate who could rally the American people and re-direct the course of the nation before it as too late.

Foremost among the conservative candidates, of course, was Barry Goldwater, the Senator from Arizona. For several years he had been saying that America was off the track and had to go back. History was catching up with the American people and what he had been saying began to make more and more sense. This was bound to reflect itself politically so it was not long before the Goldwater-for-President campaign started to roll. All across the country delegates to the Republican National Convention began announcing to advance that they had made an iron-clad commitment to support Goldwater for ONLY Goldwater.

The 1964 Republican Convention and the Goldwater Campaign

The political climate of 1964 was such that a capable conservative candidate had an excellent chance of winning, and the Establishment knew it. Money and manpower was thrown into the primaries and individual state organizations to try to stop Goldwater before he ever got to San Francisco, but the Goldwater bandwagon continued rolling along. The next step was to try to stop him at San Francisco.

The Establishment forces at the Republican National Convention were represented by the Rockefeller-Scranton contingents. They used every political weapon in their well-furbished arsenal to embarrass or discredit Goldwater. To veteran political observers it was amazing how strong the locked-in Goldwater delegates stood up under the pressure. Goldwater was nominated.

The Establishment then turned to its own locked-in sources to power. The media (press, radio, and TV) were turned on Goldwater with a blasting vengeance. In retrospect it was an amazing demonstration of what a controlled press can do in a free republic. The tactic was to divert the attention of the people away from the real issues and use whatever circumstances became available to frighten the American people away from Goldwater.

In Stephen Shadeggs book, What Happened to Goldwater? (1965) there is a valuable summary of factors which determined the ultimate outcome of the Goldwater campaign. Shadegg points out that it was impossible for Goldwater to be heard on the issues when the press, the magazines, the radio and TV were all pounding out a subtle (and sometimes blatant) message of Extremist, Racist,, Atomic-bomber, Trigger Happy, War monger, Psychologically unfit, and He will scrap Social Security.

Television advertising against Goldwater was also shrewdly prepared along the same theme. It included two powerful little Madison Avenue gems, one showing an atomic explosion and the other showing a Social Security card being torn in two.

Shadegg writes, A part of the answer to the question What happened to Goldwater? must be found in the violence of those who opposed him. The election did not hinge on the popularity of ability of Lyndon Johnson. He was a secondary figure, and the great mandate became his inheritance. It was not a testament to his wisdom or leadership, but rather an indication of the violent dislike for Goldwater generated largely by the hundreds of magazine articles, the derogatory remarks of the columnists, the unexplained errors (such as the UPI report of Goldwaters statement on the Howard Smith ABC television appearance), and the scathing attacks of people such as William Stringfellow, Ralph Gingsberg, and Fred Cook.

Dean Burch said:

 I think most of the reporters, if they would ever let their defenses down, would agree that taken as a whole the press was so violently antagonistic to Goldwater that even if they had wanted to be honest about it, it was impossible to them to be honest because they were so busy looking for weaknesses. In other words, the press in this particular campaign performed the function of the opposition. They took a look at what Goldwater advocated and them they looked for whatever was the weakest link in that chain and that became the issue.

On the other hand, with Johnson, anything that was against him they ignored. For example, if Senator Goldwater during his twelve years in the U.S. Senate has accumulated $14 million as a personal fortune I am sure that the press in a period of three months could have made his name synonymous with Benedict Arnold, whereas with Johnson it was just one of those Well boys will be boys things and everyone is entitled to make a living.

Secondly, if I or someone close to Senator Goldwater has been called before the Senate Rules Committee and them taken the Fifth Amendment, that subject would never have been dropped. At every press conference Goldwater would have been asked to explain in detail what my role was, what the planned to do about it, whereas the Bobby Baker case was stressed Only By Goldwater. The Press Never Discussed It With The President.

Thirdly, if I had been picked up in the mens room of the YMCA, [like LBJs man, Jenkins] the stories that would have been written on it would have lasted for two or three months and the conclusion would have been that obviously Goldwater knew about it and obviously, possibly, he was a little bit peculiar. - What Happened to Goldwater?, pp. 263-264)

In assessing the Gold water campaign, some criticism must rest on certain members of the Goldwater team. Unfortunately for the conservative cause he represented. Goldwater operated under the special handicap of having two or three man immediately around him who were extremely inept. If Stephen Shadegg, who had run all of Goldwaters successful campaigns from 1952 to 1962, had been in charge, and Ronald Reagan had been presenting the Goldwater issues at regular intervals on coast-to-coast TV (as John Kilroy and his committee had the money and begged for permission to do), the propaganda of the Establishment-controlled media Might have been overcome. As it was, a citizen had to be a strong independent thinker to survive the barrage of frightening headlines and slogans which the secret society and it power complex poured out against Goldwater.

For the Communist/DemocRAT party to survive, it needs the GOP “boogeyman” as a tool to scare it’s sheep with and keep them in the flock. IMHO, the best thing that could happen right now is for the GOP to collapse. The communists would then own this mess entirely. We just cannot continue going the way that we are going.

2
posted on 11/25/2012 9:42:56 AM PST
by FlingWingFlyer
(Criminal defense lawyers won't have the Twinkie to kick around anymore.)

Sowell notes that champions of the Official Version of History ignore already existing trends in black employment, well under way long before the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, from which we are taught all blessings flowed. Writes Sowell: “In the period from 1954 to 1964, for example, the number of blacks in professional, technical, and similar high-level positions more than doubled. In other kinds of occupations, the advance of blacks was even greater during the 1940s — when there was little or no civil rights policy — than during the 1950s when the civil rights revolution was in its heyday.

“The rise in the number of blacks in professional and technical occupations in the two years from 1964 to 1966 (after the Civil Rights Act) was in fact less than in the one year from 1961 to 1962 (before the Civil Rights Act). If one takes into account the growing black population by looking at percentages instead of absolute numbers, it becomes even clearer that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 represented no acceleration in trends that had been going on for many years. The percentage of employed blacks who were managers and administrators was the same in 1967 as in 1964 — and 1960. Nor did the institution of ‘goals and timetables’ at the end of 1971 mark any acceleration in the long trend of rising black representation in these occupations. True, there was an appreciable increase in the percentage of blacks in professional and technical fields from 1971 to 1972, but almost entirely offset by a reduction in the percentage of blacks who were managers and administrators.”

Sowell further notes that Asians and Hispanics show similar long-term upward trends that had begun years before the passage of the 1964 Act, and which were not accelerated either by the Act itself or by the “affirmative action” programs that (inevitably) followed. Mexican-Americans’ incomes rose in relation to those of whites between 1959 and 1969, but not at a greater rate than between 1949 and 1959. Chinese and Japanese-American households had matched their white counterparts in income by 1959 (in spite of the fact that Japanese-Americans had been interned in concentration camps less than two decades before, and countless Americans blamed Japan for the loss of their sons).

.. and don't think that the hell that conservatives are catching today from liberals, progressives, RINOs, et al is new. No it sure ain't. I voted for Goldwater.

I remember. The emerging modern conservative movement was blamed for a "climate of hate" and violence that led to the assassination of JFK.. we were blamed for lots more than that -- and no Internet plus the "Fairness Doctrine" made it risky for radio to air conservative responses -- we were the silenced generation.

"Barry Goldwater distrusted him from the start, and with good reason. On the day of John F. Kennedys assassination, Cronkite nodded his head in thinly veiled contempt when handed a note on air that the Arizona senator had said no comment. Goldwater was attending his mother-in-laws funeral that day.

"'Whether or not Senator Goldwater wins the nomination,' Cronkite told viewers another day, 'he is going places, the first place being Germany.' Although Goldwater had merely accepted an invitation to visit a U.S. Army facility there, correspondent Daniel Schorr said he was launching his campaign in 'the center of Germanys right wing.' During Goldwaters speech at the 1964 convention, some conservatives fed up with the networks gave Cronkite the finger."

I remember that.. other accounts had Cronkite reporting on his evening news show the item about Goldwater's remark. I did not remember that but I do remember Cronkite on 22 November 1963 and I remember Schorr's report on the evening CBS "news."

If only the liberals, progressives, and RINOs would come up with something new.. it's always screams of "RACIST!" "HATE!" "NAZIS!" -- though Mitt Romney's father and other Rockefeller Republicans did come up with yelling "purveyors of hate" at us. That was kind of neat.. also I remember the photo of Nelson Rockefeller at the podium (San Francisco convention 1964) giving the finger to the Goldwater delegates. Wish I could find that photo.

18
posted on 11/25/2012 11:12:55 AM PST
by WilliamofCarmichael
(If modern America's Man on Horseback is out there, Get on the damn horse already!)

Its past time for a grass roots GOP candidate to arise. The 2016 version is not yet on the horizon. Any known quantity (Rubio, Palin, Jindal) can be defined and marginalized. The GOP needs a wildcard in 2016...one from the pop culture, not the culture of Washington. Clint Eastwood please pick up the red courtesy phone...

REAGAN: If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberalsif we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.

Thanks for the link but the one I am thinking of.. I am sure I saw it,

was a closeup of Nelson at the podium gritting his teeth in a kind of grin, glaring at the Goldwater supporters who were constantly interrupting his five-minute speech, and his rigid middle finger much like it is the 1976 photo telling the nearby demonstrators "F-You" -- but at the convention the finger was telling the Goldwater people "F-you and die."

After all In the words of Nelson Rockefeller's public relations head, Stuart Spencer, Rockefeller said, "We had to destroy Barry Goldwater as a member of the human race."

IIRC news reports said that it took 18 minutes for Nelson to deliver his five-minute speech -- that was BTW an effort to get a plank in the Party platform condemning the KKK and the "climate of hate" caused by "extremists" -- aimed directly at Goldwater and us supporters!

34
posted on 11/25/2012 5:13:26 PM PST
by WilliamofCarmichael
(If modern America's Man on Horseback is out there, Get on the damn horse already!)

Disclaimer:
Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual
posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its
management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the
exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.